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CATZ – The Competitive Athlete Training Zone helps people of all ages and abilities realize their athletic potential. With training programs customized to your needs, CATZ will make you a complete athlete – with the speed, power, agility, balance, flexibility, mobility, coordination, and fitness required to perform at your highest level. You will not get a better workout than CATZ.

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Where are you on the Speed-Strength Spectrum?

Speed and strength are both attributes all athletes want. Problem is that the majority of athletes only train at one end of the spectrum. Some athletes I coach are either really fast and weak, or, really strong and slow, with a few exceptions. This is in no way their fault, it is the way they have been coached throughout their athletic lives.

The speed-strength curve is not a new concept by any means, and a large number of strength coaches have talked about this in many of their informative pieces on the subject. The question all of these coaches try and answer is: How do we train athletes to meet all points of the spectrum?

My take on this may vary a little bit from other coaches, but the idea is essentially the same. Here is a very basic idea of what this spectrum looks like:

Speed-Speed

Speed-Strength

Strength-Speed

Strength-Strength

Being on either end of this spectrum will be detrimental to your performance. Most athletes that we see at CATZ are somewhere between Speed-Speed and Speed-Strength dominant. As coaches here, we know that these athletes are going to run a lot at practice to get their conditioning and speed training. Therefore, when they come to CATZ, we try and train them to be more Strength-Speed and Strength-Strength oriented. The majority of the time like I said, a young athlete runs a ton during practice because that is all their coaches know how to do. Your late: run, you made an error: run, you missed a shot: run. Ringing a bell? Sure, by the end of your season you’re in good cardiovascular shape and a lot faster than you were at the beginning, but the problem remains, you’re still weak, and if you’re a baseball player, the bat is most likely swinging you.

You will never hear, “You’re late, go squat your 1 rep max!”

A quick example of exercises used at each spot would be:

Speed-Speed–Sprints

Speed-Strength–Med Ball Throws, Agility drills

Strength-Speed– Plyometric Pushups, Plate or Prowler Pushes

Strength-Strength– Heavy Resistance Training

A solid training program should encompass all of these exercises in a linear type fashion, meaning that they gradual increase in difficulty over time.

Just like with everything in life, a happy medium is generally a good place to be. The Speed-Strength curve is no exception. Training to be extremely strong, while maintaining a good speed and agility program will give you the best chance to be the best athlete you can be.